"Why, Naomi, I've already told you so many stories tonight. Don't you think it's time to sleep?"

"I can't sleep. I'm too scared. I want to see the stars again."

"Well, Naomi, you're not alone. I think everyone on Voyager wants to see the stars again. Captain Janeway says it's going to be dark outside for a very long time. If you want, we could paint some dots on the windows and pretend they're stars."

"I don't want to pretend. I'm scared, Neelix. What if the Borg attack us? Or the Hirogen? What if we run out of dilithium and get stuck here in the void?"

"We always make it through, don't we? Voyager is a tough ship, and the crew is even tougher. In fact, Voyager is a lot like another ship—one that went through something far worse than a patch of empty space. One that went through a war."

"Do you mean the NX-01? You promised you'd tell me about the Earth-Romulan War, but then you jumped ahead to the founding of the Federation, and I'm pretty sure you started making things up. That last story didn't make any sense."

"You're a tough critic, Naomi Wildman. But a lot of people don't like the adventures of Captain Archer, so I thought we'd skip the Earth-Romulan war."

"I'm not a lot of people. I wanted to hear that story. Things were just getting really good."

"Maybe some other time. I'd like to tell you a different story this time. A story about when the Federation went to war against the Klingons."

"Another war? You told me about the Xindi, and the Temporal Cold War, and about what's happening in the Alpha Quadrant with the Dominion—and I liked those stories, but it's hard to hear about war all the time. Especially when Voyager keeps making so many enemies. If you won't tell me about the Earth-Romulan War, then I want something happy."

"What about those stories I made up about Captain Kirk in another timeline? Those were happy, right?"

"Those don't count. I didn't like how you changed the characters, and I didn't learn anything like I usually do from those stories. Besides, they all had a bad guy trying to kill everyone with some big weapon. I miss the story about the whales."

"In the story I'd like to tell you, the crew comes across a space whale. Will that do?"

"That sounds fun."

"Good. So, this is the story of Michael Burnham."

"There was a space whale named Michael Burnham?"

"No, Naomi; the space whale comes later. Michael was a human serving in Starfleet around 100 years after Captain Archer."

"I thought you said this was the story of a ship that went to war?"

"It is. But Michael was on that ship, and this is her story."

"Her?"

"Yes, Michael was a woman. In fact, Discovery—that's the name of the ship that went to war—had all sorts of different people on board. Now, you've said that you'd like to see more female role models in the stories I tell you, and I think you'll be very happy this time. In addition to Michael, there was a female vice-admiral, Discovery's chief of security, and Michael's former captain, to name a few—all of whom came from different racial backgrounds, too."

"I like that a lot. Did they all help to win the war?"

"Not...exactly, no. The vice-admiral was captured by Klingons and left for dead; the security chief was killed when she intentionally let an indestructible space bear out of its cage; and the captain was eaten by Klingons."

"Eaten!?"

"Klingons, as you know, are hairless, purple-skinned cannibals. They—"

"Neelix, that's weird. I know what Klingons look like, and B'Elanna has never tried to eat me. Stop making things up."

"I'm serious! That's exactly what Klingons were like a decade before Captain Kirk took command of the Enterprise. Starships were a lot more advanced then, as well—the hulls and interiors were elaborately decorated, and they had technology like holographic touchscreens that floated in midair and a spore drive that could teleport a ship anywhere in the universe."

"Neelix, I told you to stop making things up! Now you're just making fun of me. I know what ships looked like back then, and not even Voyager has that kind of technology. Tell me the real story already. And leave out the Klingons and this spore drive thing for now; I want to hear about Michael."

"Ah...all right. Well, Michael was the first officer of the starship Shenzhou, and—"

"I thought you said she was on the Discovery."

"Yes, but she was on the Shenzhou first. She committed an act of mutiny against her captain, which led to the destruction of the Shenzhou, the death of her captain, and the start of a war with the Klingons. Michael was arrested and transferred to the Discovery as a prisoner, where she served dutifully under Captain Lorca."

"Was the captain evil?"

"It depends how you look at it. On the one hand, he cared so much about his own people that he would do anything to protect them. On the other hand, he didn't behave at all like a Starfleet officer, he caused a lot of damage for the sake of peace, and he tricked or coerced the crew of the Discovery into doing all sorts of morally questionable things."

"I meant the captain of the Shenzhou."

"Oh. No, she was an upstanding officer who had been a friend and mentor to Michael for several years. But Michael thought the captain was making a bad decision, so she knocked her out and took command."

"I don't think I like Michael. Is there anyone in this story who's just nice, and smart, and doesn't get eaten or try to mutiny or anything? This doesn't sound like a happy story, and I wanted something to cheer me up."

"Cadet Tilly is very cheerful. I think you'll like her. And Lieutenant Tyler is a very nice man who falls in love with Michael."

"Tilly probably gets hurt or dies, doesn't she? All the other girls I'd like had something bad happen to them. And Tyler sounds too good to be true. I bet he has a deep dark secret."

"Naomi, don't go making wild guesses."

"That's what grown-ups say when they don't want to tell me I'm right. When does the space whale come in?"

"Ah, yes. Do you remember Harry Mudd?"

"He was...the swindler with all the crazy business ideas, right?"

"The very same. When he was a little younger, Mr. Mudd snuck on board Discovery inside a space whale so he could steal the ship and its secrets and sell them to the Klingons. Discovery was a science vessel, you see, and they were doing experiments with space mushrooms and space fireflies and hundreds of other things."

"What kinds of other things?"

"Well...I'm not sure, exactly, but...but they're not important to the story."

"Why not? You said this was a science vessel, not a warship. Couldn't you make it a science story instead of a war story?"

"It is a science story. You see, Mr. Mudd had a device that kept the ship in a time loop until he accomplished his goal. Of course, he kept murdering the crew each time, but they eventually stopped him."

"That's awful! You told me Harry Mudd was a liar and a cheater, not a killer. I don't like the people in this story."

"I'll admit, they're a bit different from the characters you're used to hearing about. The crew of the Discovery didn't get along very well, at least not at first. A lot of bickering and mistrust and nasty comments. They swore sometimes, and got angry at each other, and did things behind each other's backs. But I promise you'll grow to like them as you get to know them."

"Could you tell me a story with normal people in it?"

"What do you mean, Naomi? These are normal people."

"No they aren't. They sound like what people used to be like a few hundred years ago. I can't relate to those people. They're so different from everyone I know on Voyager and everyone in all the stories you've ever told about Starfleet. I want a story about good people who work together to solve problems. I want a story that gives me hope."

"But you wanted something that would teach you a lesson, right? This story is one big lesson about learning to trust people, doing the wrong things for the right reasons, and finding out who you are. You'll have a lot to think about by the time the story is over."

"I don't want to wait that long. All the other Starfleet stories you've told me have had little lessons along the way. And they weren't so violent."

"I haven't even gotten to the Klingon side of it. There's a lot of blood and gore, and even some...adult things that I probably shouldn't tell you about."

"I don't think I want to hear any more about Michael Burnham or Discovery or the Klingon War. None of this sounds like fun."

"Now, Naomi, you can't judge a story until you've heard the whole thing. Sometimes it take a while for a story to find its footing or set up all the important details. You ended up loving the stories I told you about Captain Picard, but I remember more than a few times early on that you were ready to abandon ship. And sometimes, people have false expectations that get in the way of enjoying the story. You barely gave my stories about Deep Space Nine a chance, because you thought they were too serious and didn't have enough space exploration for a story about Starfleet. But you stuck with them, and now those stories are some of your favorites."

"I guess. But those stories felt like they fit together. This one doesn't feel like it belongs. Tell me a different story, please. One that feels like a Starfleet story, and makes me smile, and gives me something hopeful to think about."

"If that's what you really want, Naomi Wildman, then we can take a break. Maybe you're right—maybe we could use a little more brightness in this dark part of the Delta Quadrant. I've got just the story, too. Have I ever told you about the Orville?"

On this day, 20 years ago, savage war engulfed the world and civilization was destroyed. An evolution took place—the Earth's axis shifted and all creatures became mutated. Life was never the same. Those surviving vowed not to repeat their mistakes of the past and erected a great tower in the sky to oppress evil forever. You remember all that, don't you? No? Too young? What do you mean, "That never happened"? Of course it did. Obviously you've never played Crystalis.

Whether you've never heard of The END DAY or are looking for new ways to celebrate, I invite you to peruse what I've written and recorded over the years to commemorate one of my all-time favorite video games:

The general consensus among my friends is that 2016 was one of the worst years in recent memory, marred by a seemingly endless string of celebrity deaths and characterized by a viciously divisive election that was more personal than political. For me, 2016 was an emotional rollercoaster that served as an unlikely getaway vehicle from 2015, AKA the worst year of my life.

The highs and lows of 2016 were so drastic and unevenly spaced that the whole year feels almost surreal in retrospect. There were incredible highs, including Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage, seeing my name in the credits of not one but three new Mega Man games, and starting work on a Mega Man game of my own. I made one of the biggest decisions of my adult life, walking away from a stable (but undesirable) situation in order to take a risk on a new job and a new home in a different state (or, as I prefer to say, finally moving back to Earth after five years of exile on the moon). I confronted a few personal demons, not exorcising them completely but making invaluable progress. I celebrated a milestone anniversary with my wife, and we helped each other weather one physical or emotional storm after another. I had the weirdest Christmas of my life, filled with twists and turns that had me cycling through the entire range of human emotions for the better part of a week. I actually paid attention to world news for several months, attempting to keep myself informed about topics, such as the Presidential election, that were oppressively unavoidable and that demanded I have an opinion about them. I became an active part of the Mega Man fan community at Sprites INC, and I received their Spike Award for my sporadic gaming livestreams. I informally said farewell to GameCola after 8 years on staff. My mother and I went on a memorable road trip to attend the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. A brief trial of EnChroma glasses gave me a taste of what it's like to see color the way the rest of the world does. I (mostly) stopped picking tomatoes off my sandwiches. It's been quite a year.

Importantly, I made an effort to follow through on my 2016 resolutions (or, as I prefer to think of them, goals). Here's how I did:

Goal #1: Start and finish a YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 8.Hah! I had every intention of this being the one goal I would definitely achieve, but I ended up spending almost the entire year working on designing Mega Man levels instead. Having spent too many years working on multiple projects and finishing none of them in a reasonable amount of time, I made a conscious decision not to split my focus between projects, and so MM8 remains on hold (but partially recorded) until people stop giving me excuses to make more Mega Man levels.

Goal #2: Make serious headway on the video game my wife and I are planning.See above. I've at least made serious headway on OH JOES! (A Proto Man Adventure), which hadn't been conceived when I came up with these goals, so I'd call that at least a partial success.

Goal #3: Run at least one D&D campaign, then learn a new tabletop RPG system and run another campaign.Failure! I played in a number of Pathfinder sessions, but I didn't run any games of my own or learn any new systems. I did at least jot down some ideas for a D&D one-shot that I've been wanting to try for several years. Once again, my creative energies were directed almost entirely toward making Mega Man levels.

Goal #4: Read 12 books.Failure! Probably. I lost track toward the end. However, I got pretty darn close. My conservative Christian friend sent me a care package of books early in the year, relevant to some conversations we'd had, and they constituted a good portion of my reading list. I have a terrible habit of letting his gifts gather dust for several years before putting them to use, so it was good to delve into these books right away. I may write a separate post discussing everything I read in some kind of detail, but for now, here's what I read in 2016 in the order I read them:1. Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller2. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson3. The Ultimates, Vol. 2 by whoever wrote, drew, and inked it; the book's in the other room and I'm too lazy right now4. And the Good News Is... by Dana Perino5. William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope by Ian Doerscher6. Firsthand: Ditching Secondhand Religion for a Faith of Your Own by Ryan and Josh Shook7. Memories of the Future, Volume 1 by Wil Wheaton8. Spock, Messiah! by Theodore R. Cogswell and Charles A. Spano, Jr.9. Some Ultimate Spider-Man graphic novel, I think; once again, too lazy to check10. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Indistinguishable From Magic by David A. McIntee11. Things That Matter by Charles Krauthammer (about 3/4 read by the end of 2016)

Goal #5: Get my Backloggery progress index into positive double digits.Success! Even with so much of my leisure time spent reading instead of gaming, I managed to achieve not only double but triple digits—a progress index of +200, to be exact. That means I played or removed from my collection way more games than I added. Granted, there was that Backloggery revolution halfway through the year, so my real progress index is probably more like +2 than +200, but who's counting? Wait, I am.

Goal #6: Write like I used to.Partial success! My criteria for this one were to write regularly, write positively, and write for myself. I've obviously failed to meet the first criterion, but the second and third are well in hand. Articles like this one and posts like this one capture my passion for blogging and critical analysis, and even if they're not all sunshine and puppycats, they don't come across as the "general bitterness commentary" that characterized my writing for too long a period. I'm writing the way I want to write—the way I used to write—and it feels wonderful.

Now, then. Let's see if I can't come up with some goals I might have a better shot at achieving in 2017:

Goal #1: Spend more weekends at home.For the last decade or so, I have done an out-of-state road trip at least once every month. Often at least twice a month. Usually at least three times a month. With so many friends and family members living close enough to visit regularly, but far enough away that a day trip is out of the question, I find myself giving up as many as 10 hours every weekend just to get where I'm going and back. Departing on a Friday evening or first thing Saturday morning, and not coming back until Sunday afternoon or evening, leaves me with insufficient time to work on my creative projects and keep on top of the housework and kick around and relax. It also leaves me with insufficient funds to live as freely as I'd like to—road trips are expensive. For the sake of my sanity and my wallet, I intend to set aside at least one weekend a month for going nowhere.

Goal #2: Finish OH JOES! (A Proto Man Adventure).Everything is on track for the game to be released in early 2017, so I really hope there aren't any awful surprises here.

Goal #3: Finish a YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 8.As long as I'm not designing Mega Man levels the entire year, this should be doable.

Goal #4: Read 12 books.I was very close to accomplishing this in 2016, and I only fell short because of how Christmas vacation turned out. I'd like this goal to become a staple, because it's good to be reading again.

Goal #5: Maintain a positive Backloggery progress index.Likewise, I'd like to make this goal a staple. My video game wishlist has shrunk dramatically in the last year, and I'm quicker than ever to identify when it's time to stop playing the game I'm working on.

Goal #6: Get involved in my community.It has been eating as me for several years that I'm not involved in church and volunteer activities like I used to be. I want to join a choir or a small group or something, and I want to find ways to live where I'm living. Hopefully, spending more weekends at home will allow me the time to do so.

I've got a good feeling about these goals. I'll let you know in a year how things go.

Hi. I...uh...I haven't been around for a while, huh? I can explain that.

I've been busy. Not necessarily any busier than usual, but my focus has been elsewhere. I recently moved, and now I'm close enough to friends that I might be busy any given weeknight. I started a new job, and there's a "no blogging" policy that's curtailed my lunchtime writing breaks. I've thrown myself into developing a small Mega Man fangame, which has consumed almost all my free time for the last several weeks. Most importantly, I've taken stock of all my activities and obligations, and I've started turning my attention away from the things that don't energize and fulfill me the way I used to. Blogging, much to my surprise, is one such thing.

To be clear, I still love to write. I still intend to update my Series Opinions when I have the time and inspiration, and I'm not abandoning blogging altogether. But I look at the last several months--heck, the last year or two--and I can't consider myself a "blogger" anymore. With rare exception, my only posts have been my monthly Retrospectives--a holdover from my days with Exfanding Your Horizons, when we relied on regularly scheduled filler posts (which, ostensibly, were also of some benefit to our less-regular readers) to meet our blogging quotas. Until recently, I didn't stop to consider whether I wanted to keep going with a recurring summary of my online deeds. It was simply something I did. I never thought much of it because of how little time it took, in the grand scheme of things. Not like the GameCola articles that took me weeks to assemble, or the YouTube videos that took months. But when I assessed everything I was doing with my life, I came to realize that even the small effort it took to keep up with a monthly Retrospective was still an intrusion on how I wanted to be spending my time anymore.

If you're following an obscure blog that never updates, then you're probably following me on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and maybe even The Backloggery, where you'll get updates on my online deeds in real time. Neither of us needs a Retrospective anymore. (Apologies to the one person who misses the Retrospectives.)

That's how I operate: I accumulate more and more obligations and join more and more activities until I'm completely overburdened, then I clean house and start over again. I never want to let people down, and I often feel guilty backing out of a commitment (no matter how good the excuse is), and I'm also a creature of habit. Once I start something, I'm disinclined to stop. This is why I've played through so many video games I haven't enjoyed. Even that has changed, though; you may recall my Backloggery Revolution earlier this year, and I haven't looked back. I've lost all patience for things that should be fun but aren't. I have so little time to myself anymore that I can't afford to waste a second on anything that doesn't build me up.

That's a little unhealthy for a perfectionist, mind you. I already want the things I do in my free time to go smoothly; now I'm pressuring myself to choose the best possible activities and make sure they go off without a hitch. I'm making myself unhappy by trying to be happy. How messed up is that? The solution, or at least part of the solution, is to free up more time for myself so I'm not so pressured to make every moment count. To awkwardly employ a metaphor, they say there's no use crying over spilled milk, but I'll still cry less if I spill the same amount from a fuller glass.

Regardless, no matter what I do, I will always question whether it's the best thing I can do. Suppose I volunteer to be a friendly visitor at a nursing home. Great, right? But then I'm not helping out at a homeless shelter, providing disaster relief in the wake of the latest hurricane, mentoring a troubled teenager, or doing any number of other important things. And let's be honest; the activities I'm choosing between are playing AM2R and watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain Goes Somewhere You'll Never Visit, At This Rate. Maybe that's not all bad, though. Giving of oneself is arguably the highest pursuit there is, but giving is hollow without someone to receive the gift. By being a consumer of entertainment, I'm validating the time and effort that countless people have spent on trying to make me happy, however indirectly. Maybe, with the right mindset, whatever I'm doing is the best thing I could be doing. At the very least, I can aim to make the most of any situation, however trivial and wasteful it may seem.

It feels good to write again. I missed this. I missed you, dear reader. Even if I'm only writing for myself, this feels worthwhile. Even if this wasn't the best thing I could have done with my time, this feels worthwhile. Maybe perfectionism is the fear of things being less than worthwhile. Well, then. Things are going perfectly.

I've been lurking around the World Wide Web since the days of dial-up, but it wasn't until my first post with Exfanding Your Horizons in 2008 that I established any kind of online presence. Before then, you'd never find anything of mine by accident—if you had my e-mail address, it was because I knew you in person and gave it to you; if you were on my Angelfire website (about which I remember nothing, other than that it was as much an eyesore as anything else from the Web 1.0 era), it was because I sent you the link. I had a brief flirtation with AOL chat rooms in the '90s, but such a presence is ephemeral at best.

The only public trace of my online existence was a website I created for a high school history project, which was ostensibly about the American Civil War, but which was secretly a playground where the popup text for hovering over Roger B. Taney's portrait was "Would you buy cookies from this man?" and where clicking on the conspicuous blank space at the bottom of the last page would make a picture of Boba Fett appear. It looks like the site has finally been taken down, but I was able to Google and Yahoo! my way back to it for a good many years after I graduated. Other than a stray photo or guestbook signature on someone else's site, you'd never know I was around before 2008.

Or so I thought.

On a whim, I did a web search for "Flashman85," my default handle for general geekery online. Don't ask me what possessed me to do this—I'm not even sure myself. The first several results were no surprise—my profiles on Twitch, YouTube, The Backloggery, Sprites INC, and a few other sites where I felt the urge to comment that one time. But then there was a review of Mega Man for the NES written by a Flashman85. Funny, I thought to myself. I've only ever reviewed that game on GameCola, under my real name. Let's see who this other guy is.

"To paraphrase a friend of mine," the review began, "Capcom's idea for Megaman was 'Mario with a gun.' Indeed, few would suspect how popular a franchise the Blue Bomber would become. The original game was similar to other NES games of the time, but it also had laudable properties that would help it to endure into the next century."

That's an odd coincidence, I thought. I also had a friend who described Mega Man as "Mario with a gun." And I'm definitely the only person on the Internet who uses the words "indeed" and "laudable." Who is this guy?

As it turned out, that guy was me.

Now, I've written a lot during my time with a keyboard in front of me. I may not be able to readily call to mind every post and comment I've virtually penned, but show me something I've written and I'll at least be able to recall a few details about it. Staring at this review—dated 2002, well before I really existed on the Internet—I had no recollection whatsoever of it. I didn't even recognize the website it was on. But there was no mistaking that this was my writing.

The shockingly low word count is what initially threw me the most. The whole review weighs in at a downright economical 231 words, which is barely enough for me to develop an introduction these days. However, it would be totally like me to spend almost 50% of the review complaining about Ice Man's stage. "'If you can beat Ice Man's stage, you can beat any Megaman game' is my motto." A little hint of Dave Barry there. I used to read a lot of Dave Barry. There were signs everywhere that this was me, notwithstanding Past Me's insistence on writing "Mega Man" as one word. Silly Past Me.

I looked around the site for other reviews that I had apparently written, and I found that I had covered all six of the NES Mega Man games. MM3 was no surprise: "My only real qualm is that many of the weapons go unused for most of the game." If I hadn't already caught on by then, my gushing praise for MM4 would have been a complete giveaway that this was me of 14 years ago writing all these reviews: "There is almost nothing for me to complain about in this fantastic game. Buy it. Now."

I've reread enough of my old material to know how far I've come as a writer since 2008, but it's surreal to jump back to 2002. There's little elegance to my old writing, but there's character. You can tell exactly how much I care about each aspect of each game—there's no veneer of objectivity and no time wasted describing anything that doesn't significantly impact my enjoyment of the game, no matter how important it might be for the reader to know. Most of the opinions expressed have remained unchanged in the last 14 years, but the way I express those opinions has evolved dramatically.

I still think MM1 is a classic, I still think people are too quick to label MM2 as easy, and I'm still a bit lukewarm about MM6 in the context of the rest of the series. I had forgotten just how wild about MM5 I used to be; my enthusiasm has cooled somewhat, but it's still one of my favorites. I'm less fanatical about MM4 as well; "Pure Excellence" is not a review title I would ever use anymore, even if the game remains my favorite. It's almost unsettling to hear myself describe MM3 as "one of the best Mega Man games ever." Perhaps you've seen my videos?

It's fascinating and almost a little bittersweet to read my own opinions from an era when I could like or dislike something without putting too much thought into it. Clearly, I was already attuned to certain aspects of game design, but I was capable of both zealotry and indifference without having to provide exhaustive support for my feelings. I've become so analytical that I need to understand why I'm having fun, and I clash so much with the mainstream nowadays that I need to be ready to defend my unpopular opinions at the drop of a hat. I'm too much a champion of separating fact from opinion to be able to share my feelings so unequivocally anymore. I envy Past Me for his ability to play something, enjoy it, write a quick blurb about it, and get back to having fun. He can keep his expository writing style (all the criticism I got from teachers about my essays is starting to make sense), but I wouldn't mind if some of that carefree enthusiasm were to come back.

If you'd like to open this time capsule for yourself, I present to you my old reviews of MM1, MM2, MM3, MM4, MM5, and MM6. Watch for the part where I continue complaining about Ice Man in a game where he doesn't even appear. That's so me.

Hoo boy. After five years of exile on the moon (as I frequently referred to it), I finally found an opportunity to leave. July was spent packing up the moon base and looking for a new place to live, but I managed to fit in a little time to keep some of my side projects going.

I started writing up Series Opinions for two more Star Trek movies, and I performed some long-overdue maintenance on my Series Opinions pages in general. I introduced a new section for Mega Man fangames...or maybe that was in June. I officially need to add a "Last updated on..." tag to each opinion so I can keep track of what to list here! I guess you'll have to settle for a single blog post.

Although I haven't made any official announcement on the site itself, I've scaled back my GameCola contributions to the point where I'm more of a cameo-amenable former contributor than an active staff member. Our long-delayed year-end awards finally surfaced in July, and I contributed writeups for Chrono Trigger and the original Super Mario Bros., which won Best Game of 20 and 30 Years Ago, respectively. It should come as no surprise that I, a man perpetually behind the times, had nothing to do with the writeups for any of the games released in the year we were actually celebrating.

GOG sale + a PayPal balance I keep forgetting about = time to pick up a couple discounted games I've had my eye on. I also gave SuperDanny Powered Up another shot, following a conversation with the game's developer, and I put enough effort into beating the game to warrant adding it to my backlog.

I expect August to be similarly sparse, but hopes are high that I'll be able to kick my side projects into high gear once my wife and I have finished unpacking everything and have finished jumping through all the other hoops involved in moving back to Earth from the moon.

I'm getting back into a writing groove, with two blog posts of actual substance to show for myself, as well as plenty of writing for my Series Opinions pages (though not quite enough to report anything as completed for June).

2016 has been The Year of Mega Man for me, and it would be almost criminal not to write about it on GameCola. Even though the site is finally back from hiatus, I've felt my creativity pulling me in other directions lately, so updates in this category will probably get smaller and farther between as time goes on. Or maybe I'll pull a Michael Gray and make a tradition of announcing my retirement and coming back a couple months later.

Now that I've got way more fangames to play than I can possibly keep up with (see this thread), I'm trying to step up how often I livestream. My original intention with my Twitch channel was to get people from my GeminiLaser channel interested by playing a few different Mega Man games, and then branching out to whatever I felt like playing...but I really have developed a niche for myself with Mega Man, and these fangame sampler livestreams have almost become a form of community service, documenting games that have received little or no coverage anywhere else on the Internet. It's kind of an honor to be the curator of what might be the most comprehensive list of Mega Man fangames out there, and to have such a strong following when I record these games.

You've probably seen or heard me talk about my Backloggery, where I keep track of my progress through all the video games I own or have played. Since I joined in 2009, I've been using my Backloggery as a means of keeping up with my buying habits—the more unfinished games on my list, the more the completionist in me strives to play what I've purchased, instead of continually going back to my old favorites. Although I've been successful in playing more and buying less, I've also turned my favorite pastime into something of a chore. Too many of the games in my backlog have ended up being long on replay value and short on fun factor, yet I've insisted on playing them to 100% completion. Marking every game on my Backloggery as Complete is a game in itself, and it's one I'm predisposed to playing.

Fortunately, a few of the games I've played since joining The Backloggery have worn down my resolve. Final Fantasy VIII made me question my rigid completionist mentality, and Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls confirmed that I needed to break out of it. Sonic and the Secret Rings empowered me to abandon games I don't like enough to play to any sort of completion, let alone 100%. Today, the Gradius Collection version of Gradius III incited a revolution that's been brewing for a long time: a total shift in how I define 100% completion.

The Backloggery gives you three options for marking a game as finished: Beaten, Completed, and Mastered. The exact meaning of these options varies from one person to the next, but the general consensus is that Completed means you've done everything there is to do in the game, both obvious and secret. Now, there are games in my collection such as Escape Goat, Dragon Warrior III, and Police Quest II where I'm very close to earning Completed status, but I lack the skill or patience to go after whatever I've missed. Then there are games such as Star Fox 64 and Rollercoaster Tycoon where I'm nowhere close, and games such as Star Soldier and Area 51 that aren't even in my collection. By adhering to a strict code of what it means to be Completed, I've saddled myself with a load of Beaten games that have little or no hope of upgrading their status. It kind of defeats the purpose of working so hard toward 100% Backloggery completion if the best I'm likely to achieve is 70%.

Gradius III drove home how futile my approach has been. I know that I'll never be good enough at space shooters to beat any of the Gradius games on the highest difficulty setting (this is not a defeatist attitude; this is statement of fact), so I've adjusted my definition of "Completed" for these games to mean "finished on the highest difficulty setting I can manage." This kind of compromise is not a new one; for example, I prematurely marked Muramasa: The Demon Blade as Completed, because the hardest difficulty setting is so absurd that Mastered would be the only appropriate completion status. What's different about Gradius III is that, more so than the other games in the Gradius Collection, its roots as a quarter-gobbling arcade machine shine through.

Only a game designed to steal your money would be so relentlessly difficult (to the point of being outright cheap) and offer so few checkpoints to compensate. I am stuck on the last checkpoint of the game, and I am tired of spending four minutes slogging through a tedious corridor and beating up on an easy final boss, only to die repeatedly in the last 10 seconds of an overly fast escape sequence that demands incredible reflexes and perfect precision. It is only through abuse of save states that I made it this far, and I am playing on the easiest of nine difficulty modes. The game stopped being fun a long time ago, but I've already beaten the (considerably fairer) SNES port of Gradius III, and I was able to conquer the other games in the collection with enough practice, so the completionist in me is insisting on seeing this game through to the end. I mean, I'm only 10 seconds from beating the game!

No. No I'm not. I'm probably a couple hours from beating the game, if it's possible for me to beat it at all. And even if I win, I can't mark the game as Completed until I've finished it on the next highest difficulty mode as well. I never want to play this game again. This is where I finally draw the line. All the Completed medals in the world aren't worth the pain I've already endured, let alone what's ahead if I stay on this course. I'm changing the rules: this is as far as I care to play, and I'm marking the game as Completed so that I'm never tempted to go back and waste more of my life on this.

My new rules are simple. Beaten means I've reached a good stopping point, but want to keep exploring the game. Completed means I've done everything there is to do, or else everything I have the skill and desire to do, and thus have reached an even better stopping point. The goal of maintaining a Backloggery is to keep playing the games I own, not to get hung up doing something that makes me unhappy. I know; this should be obvious, but that completionist mentality is difficult to shake. To help enforce these new rules, I've gone through my entire game list and updated the status of every game accordingly. Wait until you see this month's Retrospective; the Backloggery section is going to be ridiculous.

I feel better already, like a huge, self-imposed weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Video games are supposed to be fun, and I refuse to let my completionism keep my favorite pastime from being enjoyable anymore.

A couple months ago, I Iooked in the mirror in the morning and saw a ghost of the man I was expecting to see. Pallid, sluggish, slouching, and with frighteningly dark circles under my eyes, I resembled the undernourished children or sad-looking animals you see in those heartbreaking TV commercials asking for donations. The only thing missing was Sarah McLachlin singing about me as I struggled to apply deodorant. "For only 20 minutes of your time, you could send this man to bed a little earlier." I hadn't been taking good care of myself, and this was the visual alarm I needed to bring attention to the matter.

I believe that there are four major kinds of fulfillment that every person needs: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Everyone seeks them from different sources and needs them in different amounts, but they're all equally important. For me, good food, sleeping in on weekends, hugs, taking walks, and the perks of being married (namely, getting to hold my loved one while we're watching TV; I'm not sure what you're thinking of) are how I usually get my physical fix. I get emotional satisfaction from doing a good job of something, helping others, singing, writing, and immersing myself in escapist entertainment. Intellectually, I need to pick things apart and analyze them, apply my creative problem-solving skills, and discuss topics of substance with the people around me. On a spiritual level, I am energized by affirmations that my life is important and is making a difference in the world; I am refreshed by devotionals, Bible studies, and being part of a community that shares my religious faith; and I need the perspectives of people who don't share my beliefs so that I'm better equipped to differentiate truth from Truth. Over the last few years, my priorities have gotten misaligned, and it's only recently that I've realized how neglectful I've been of myself.

This morning, I looked in the mirror and saw that same ghost. I wasn't expecting to see him again so soon; the last couple months have been an exercise in self-care, and I've made it a point to follow a curfew befitting a working adult. But I am not the only factor in my own well-being. I worked a 13-hour day last Thursday, with my only break being 20 minutes to grab a burrito for dinner. On Friday, I worked past midnight. I've had a string of appointments and long car trips (made longer by terrible traffic). Every time I turn on my computer, I see news about another avoidable tragedy, and more evidence that it's unhealthy for this country's election cycle to last so long. Physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, life circumstances have been running me ragged. I've spent the last several days devoting my precious little free time to a regimen of aggressive relaxation, and that's the only reason I haven't cracked yet. That's caregiving 101, right? You can't take care of others unless you take care of yourself.

Through all of this, I've realized that I've been working too hard to take care of myself. There will always be things beyond my control that impact how I feel, but I've put myself in a situation where the negative surprises routinely outweigh the positive. If I really want to take care of myself, and banish that ghost for good, I need to change my circumstances, not keep fighting against them. I need to surround myself with the people and things that build me up, not just seek them out after being beaten down. It's time to make some changes.

May was a fantastic month for my online projects, and I've been working on a number of things that won't be ready until at least June or July. For one thing, I started learning FamiTracker so I can try my hand at composing music for a certain semi-secret project that's in the works...

Not much in the way of blog posts, but I did spend a lot of time developing various Series Opinions pages, finishing one and bringing several others closer to completion. On a related note, I really need to start including a "last updated" date for each of these so I can remember which ones to list in these Retrospective posts. I'm fairly certain that the majority of opinions I've written have never been mentioned in a Retrospective, on account of finishing them too early in the month to remember to include them. Well, and I also made the decision not too long ago to start highlighting each installment as it gets finished, rather than waiting for the whole category page to be done, so a lot of reviews fell by the wayside there. Poke around; there's plenty to read (and all of it is always subject to change).

A few of the best livestreams I've ever done are preserved for posterity, my last two GameCola Podcasts are now on YouTube, and I finally got around to creating a channel intro video that's beneficial for new viewers, but mostly aimed at my longtime fans. Specifically, the longtime fans who have no idea that my GeminiLaser work is but a tiny portion of what I do in this series of tubes I call home, and especially the ones who assume I must be dead if it's been more than 72 hours since my last video or comment. Also, the video was super fun to assemble, and I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out. The last item on the list isn't technically for YouTube, but I did contribute a short clip to a video put together by Patricia of Old School Lane, whom you may remember as the host of a podcast interview I did at the beginning of 2014. The video itself gets very personal and spans a range of emotions (being at various times serious, silly, depressing, and uplifting), but it's an interesting watch if you've got the time, particularly if you're familiar with Patricia's work. You'll know my clip when you see it.

May marks the second time this year where a Mega Man level I designed for a contest was released for public consumption. Last time it was the Mega Man Legacy Collection; this time it's Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest, the awkwardly titled fangame comprised of levels from 20 contestants and five judges, all tied together by a hub filled with zany characters. In addition to contributing a level ("Maze of Death"), I had the honor of announcing the contest results via livestream (see above), I designed the logo on the title screen, and I've been an unofficial playtester and copyeditor/writer (you can blame me for most of the instructional text now). My personal stake in the game aside, this is one of my favorite Mega Man fangames yet; it's funny, highly replayable, and a solid challenge. The sheer variety of level designs makes for a unique experience, too; even the levels that aren't so fun to play make for good conversation, and it's interesting to read the judges' reactions to them. The game is free to download, and a multitude of improvements and tweaks have been made since I livestreamed the game. If you're even remotely interested in Mega Man, platformers, or collaborative game design, give this one a look.

It's nice to play games I'm enjoying, and nicer still to stop playing games once I've gotten everything I care to get out of them, even if I haven't beaten them yet. Faced with the reality I will probably never again be able to log into my Desura account to play the one game I have there, I did a little housekeeping.

New:
- Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest (PC)
- You Have to Win the Game (Steam)

Started:
- A Boy and His Blob (Wii)
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS)
- Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest (PC)
- You Have to Win the Game (Steam)